Rejected stalkers are intrusive and inordinately persistent. They recognize no boundaries – personal or legal. They honor to “contracts” and they pursue their target for years. They interpret rejection as a sign of the victim’s continued interest and obsession with them. They are, therefore, impossible to get rid of. Many of them are narcissists and, thus, lack empathy, feel omnipotent and immune to the consequences of their actions.

Even so, some stalkers are possessed of an uncanny ability to psychologically penetrate others. Often, this gift is abused and put at the service of their control freakery and sadism. Stalking – and the ability to “mete out justice” makes them feel powerful and vindicated. When arrested, they often act the victim and attribute their actions to self-defense and “righting wrongs”.

Stalkers are emotionally labile and present with rigid and infantile (primitive) defense mechanisms: splitting, projection, projective identification, denial, intellectualization, and narcissism. They devalue and dehumanize their victims and thus “justify” the harassment or diminish it. From here, it is only one step to violent conduct.

Domestic Violence and Abuse statistics – Click here

Before we proceed to outline the psychological profile of the stalker, it is important to try and gauge the extent of the problem by quantifying its different manifestations. More plainly, studying the available statistics is both enlightening and useful. Contrary to common opinion, there has been a marked decline in domestic violence in the last decade. Moreover, rates of domestic violence and intimate partner abuse in various societies and cultures – vary widely.

It is, therefore, safe to conclude that abusive conduct is not inevitable and is only loosely connected to the prevalence of mental illness (which is stable across ethnic, social, cultural, national, and economic barriers). There is no denying that the mental problems of some offenders do play a part – but it is smaller than we intuit. Cultural, social, and even historical factors are the decisive determinants of spousal abuse and domestic violence.

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